The Sound of Silence
by orangefanfic
Summary: Here's our take on how Norma lost her voice. In this short story, we take a look into her troubled past and also see an alternate storyline for the saga between Piper and Alex. [Trigger warning: sexual violence.]
1. Part 1

_Prap, prap, prap, prap._

Norma scampered up the steps almost tripping over her own gangly legs. She'd climbed the eight floors to her mother's apartment a million times, but now the journey was endless.

_Just get to the tub_, she told herself.

_Get to the tub_ was the order that drowned out all the other noise and pushed it to the far edges of her mind. There wasn't space or time for anything else. No time to remember what had happened. No time to feel the red hot tears burning down her cheeks or to recognize Mrs. Roselli's voice as she cocked her head into the hallway to ask why the hell Norma was making such a racket marching up those steps. She couldn't see, hear, think, speak or smell anything else. Not now.

Now there was only time to reach apartment 8B, feel the key under the mat, hear the deadbolt snap, and reach the tub.

Norma threw off her shoes and plunged her body into the steaming hot water with her dress still on, suds sloshing to the floor and gathering beneath the clawed feet of her mother's tub.

_What was she going to say to her mother?_

She could still hear his voice in her ear, threatening to kill her if she told a soul. Could still feel the tightness of his fists and the roughness of his whiskers scraping her skin.

She scrubbed harder. Blood trickled out and clouded the soapy water. She could smell and taste and feel him all over and she feared that he wouldn't go away.

She peeled off her dress. Climbed out of the tub and spread out on the floor. At age 11 Norma was an itty bitty thing, as her mother would say, so small and thin and white that she imagined if anyone had walked into the bathroom just then, they might not have even noticed her lying naked, full moon to the sky, against the equally pale bathroom tile.

It would be roughly 45 minutes before Norma would hear her mother's key turn in the lock and she'd toddle in exhausted from her second job at the laundry, hands calloused but ready to slice and boil and bake a miracle out of their near-empty pantry. Norma would have this mess cleaned up by then.

Laying her cheek against the cool of the linoleum tile, she decided that her mother didn't need this aggravation. She wouldn't tell her anything. She wouldn't tell anyone anything again.


	2. Part 2

They say that stress can make your mind play tricks on you, and Alex certainly was under stress. Protective custody was a cruel joke that had banished her to Queens, of all places, so it was only a matter of time before she started seeing things. But this was beyond.

"Piper. What the fuck."

Alex stood frozen in the doorway, not able to make sense of Piper's actual presence a few feet away. She looked amazing, adorned with a smoky eye and a lacy black dress that meant she was going or coming from someplace fancy.

"Are you going to invite me in?"

"Like a vampire." Alex swept her inside.

They stared at each other over mugs of instant coffee, a far cry from what they'd had in Brussels or Jakarta. But it was better than anything available at the Litch.

"I got furlough," Piper started, choosing her words carefully.

"Nobody gets furlough."

"I know."

"How the hell did you - ?"

"Listen. I'm sure that everyone's standing around at my grandmother's wake wondering where I am. I was in a car headed there, but then I remembered what she always used to say to me. She said, 'Eat the world, Piper.'"

Piper inched her coffee cup closer, slightly grazing Alex's fingers with hers. For the briefest of moments her lips curled into a smile.

"But I can't," she continued. "I can't eat the world, because you took the world away from me."

Alex glanced again at Piper's fingers, gripping the cup so tight her knuckles had turned stark white.

* * *

11-year-old Norma gripped the jar tightly and held it to her chest. She loved to watch the olive oil flow from one side of the glass to the other. It was soothing, but she knew better than to drop it.

"What's the matter with you?" her mother asked as she hunted through the market aisles for a deal. "You used to be such a good student, best in class. What happened?"

"Nothing," Norma sputtered as she slunk behind.

Her mother turned to catch her eye.

"Not according to the school. They say you're a problem, that you refuse to participate. Norma, what's with this _silence_?"

Norma's eyes dropped to the ground. Nowadays she was lucky to manage a one-word reply, but this was too much. Staring down at her mother's boxy shoes, she fixed her eyes on a tiny tear in the sole, which she knew would wear clean through to the bottom before her mother would be able to replace the pair.

She felt a lump forming in her throat, rising up and reaching the tip of her tongue as she struggled for a response.

"_Speak up_," her mother demanded.

Just as Norma lifted her head to meet her mother's gaze, and miracle of miracles, made breath push past her lips to almost form a syllable, she caught the cadence of that old chilling voice. Saw his dusky frame move in on them.

It was him.

"Ms. Romano! Funny running into you here," he sang.

"We're only neighbors, baccalà," Norma's mother teased, instantly the most charming woman in the entire borough of Brooklyn.

"It's been too long…"

Their voices faded to white noise in Norma's head. She was cloudy, watching the world bend like a scrap of sheet metal or a reflection in a funhouse mirror.

"I certainly appreciate you looking after little Norma…"

Worse, Norma was overcome by his smell. Not smelling him, but smelling him _on her_. She couldn't wash him away.

And then he looked at her.

Suddenly struck by the feeling that she would surely die, Norma willed the world to stop spinning and free her from his gaze. It seemed to work as everything fell silent.

Then they heard the persistent pat of liquid lapping the floor. Norma looked down to see it streaming down her leg, dampening her dress and forming a sickening puddle. But she didn't dare look away from it to find everyone in the crowded market now staring at her, their faces twisted in horror.

She was too old to wet herself. It had never happened before and it might never happen again, but the damage was done. Her mother's voice cut the air like a siren projecting all her shame.

_"Norma Romano. What the hell is wrong with you?"_

Everything was wrong.

Norma's hands quivered and dropped the jar, and it shattered. As olive oil slowly seeped through the shards of glass, no longer soothing, Norma made herself a promise. She couldn't let him get away with taking so much from her. She would make him pay.


	3. Part 3

Alex awoke to a stinging pain in her throat. The gag was still in. Her whole body was sore. This was the price of kink.

It felt like morning, but she needed to see it with her own eyes. She turned to reach for her glasses on the nightstand and _clink_—

Her wrists jerked hard against cold metal.

_Shit_. Piper had left her handcuffed.

Alex squinted to see that the bathroom door was open. But no one was there.

_Piper wouldn't do this,_ Alex reasoned, twisting in the sheets and craning her neck to get a glimpse of the nightstand.

They'd had a long talk the night before. Alex was leaving and this time, she couldn't come back. She didn't feel safe with Kubra on the loose. She didn't have a choice.

The two women had talked circles around their relationship and who was at fault. Piper still blamed Alex for the fact that furlough was now the only freedom she had, and she was livid when Alex talked about skipping town. But by the end of the night they'd ended up in the same place as usual - in bed, back in each other's grasp. It was unavoidable.

Piper seemed to soften as she straddled Alex and pinned her arms back.

"Fuck it. Let's make the most of furlough. Let's try something different," she said.

"Fuck it," Alex agreed.

As Alex accepted the role of submissive that night, she figured all was forgiven.

Now in the cold light of morning, she could barely make out what looked like _10:40am_ on the bedside clock. Her flight would be leaving in twenty minutes.

The nightstand was a blur, but she could see that her phone and her glasses were both missing. Piper's clothes were missing. Piper was missing.

As Alex came to grips with the fact that Piper had set her up, that no, she wasn't leaving the country, and yes, she'd be stranded here until either her parole officer came in to bust her or Kubra's men came in to kill her, she remembered the words Piper had whispered the night before.

"You deserve to be punished."

Alex sucked in a deep breath through her nose and tried to scream against the gag in her mouth, but it was packed tight.

There was only silence.

* * *

_In restless dreams I walk alone_

_Narrow streets of cobblestone…_

17-year-old Norma hummed Simon and Garfunkel to herself as the leaves crunched underneath her sneakers. She pulled her jacket tight, turned her collar up against the cold. The chill still felt like it was coming from inside.

But she was doing this. She had sat in the bus station for hours just trying to talk herself into it, and finally got up the nerve to take the Greyhound all this way. There was no turning back now.

Her knuckles were tight as she wrapped on the door.

It was a tiny house with peeling paint and a dented yellow mailbox out front. Covered in a blanket of dead fall leaves and so far off the road you'd never find your way there unless you came on purpose.

Norma glanced around back. She supposed that maybe no one was home, until she saw the curtains flutter.

It was so swift, it startled her. She turned heel and walked briskly back to the road.

_Forget it_, she decided.

But as she reached the ugly yellow mailbox she heard him calling her name.

Norma turned to face him and saw the flash of recognition in his eyes. She was frightened, but this time she didn't wet herself like a child. She summoned all the courage that she could and strode into the house with him.

She was doing this.

* * *

There was so much blood, more than Norma had ever seen in person. Certainly more than she bled into the tub the day he stole her innocence. And that made Norma glad.

She let it spill onto the carpet as she cleaned her knife in the kitchen sink.

She would leave his body there.

* * *

_Hello darkness, my old friend _

_I've come to talk with you again _

_Because a vision softly creeping _

_Left its seeds while I was sleeping_

_And the vision that was planted in my brain_

_Still remains…_

Norma hummed again to herself as she perched in the corner of the kitchen. Her hands were now shaky with age as she sliced each apple and carefully scooped out its seeds. She didn't care how long it took. She was doing this.

"You know how many seeds you're gonna need to make a lethal dose of arsenic?" Gloria said, snooping. "More than all the apples ever given to any teacher you've ever known."

With one look, Gloria knew exactly what Norma was up to. Vee's malice had spread like a cancer through the entire prison, and Norma was determined to take her out.

"But there are other ways. All you gotta do is ask," Gloria offered.

A sheepish grin spread across Norma's face. She'd taken people out before, but for once, it was nice not to have to go it alone.


End file.
